General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Bodkin

Bodkin is a seven-episode darkly comedic thriller series that premiered on Netflix on May 9, 2024, following a trio of podcasters who travel to a fictional coastal Irish town to investigate the disappearance of three strangers decades earlier¹. It was created by British writer Jez Scharf and produced by Higher Ground, the production company of Barack and Michelle Obama, as the company's first scripted television series²^•³.

Key fact	Detail
Premiere	May 9, 2024, all seven episodes released simultaneously on Netflix¹^•⁴
Creator	Jez Scharf, co-showrunner with executive producer Alex Metcalf²
Production	Higher Ground (Barack and Michelle Obama), wiip, Netflix, and Wild Atlantic Pictures⁵
Main cast	Will Forte as Gilbert Power, Siobhán Cullen as Dove Maloney, Robyn Cara as Emmy Sizergh⁶
Setting	The fictional town of Bodkin in West Cork, filmed mainly in Union Hall and Glandore, County Cork⁷
Ratings	67% on Rotten Tomatoes (39 reviews), Metascore 59 on Metacritic, 6.9/10 on IMDb⁸^•⁹^•¹⁰
Status	One season; listed as canceled/ended¹¹

Spoilers

Premise and characters

The series centers on three mismatched podcasters investigating the disappearance of three people in the idyllic coastal town of Bodkin, where the locals would prefer the past stay buried¹. Netflix's own synopsis describes the disappearances as occurring "decades earlier"⁶; reviews place the event variously at 20, 21, or 25 years before the story begins¹²^•¹³. The victims vanished during the town's Samhain festival, a traditional Gaelic fall festival marking the end of the harvest².

The central trio. Gilbert Power (Will Forte) is an American podcaster from Chicago who won a Peabody Award for a podcast about his wife's cancer and now hopes to break into true crime while exploring his Irish roots¹³. His podcast is co-produced by a London daily newspaper, which supplies the team¹³. Emmy Sizergh (Robyn Cara) is his earnest young assistant¹². Dove Maloney (Siobhán Cullen), a Dublin-born investigative journalist with The Guardian, is sent to Bodkin against her will after the whistleblower who was her central source for a story died by suicide¹². The show's dramatic engine is the clash between Gilbert's storytelling instinct and Dove's demand for facts; creator Jez Scharf described the series as "a push and pull between perspectives" about how people tell themselves stories and call the result the truth¹⁴.

The local ensemble includes Chris Walley as Seán O'Shea, David Wilmot as the fisherman Seamus Gallagher, Pom Boyd as Mrs. O'Shea, Denis Conway as Sergeant Power, and Ger Kelly as Teddy¹¹.

Story and resolution

The investigation expands well beyond the original cold case. According to Netflix's official ending explainer, the trio's digging uncovers an international eel-smuggling ring, with yakuza representatives who turn out to be Interpol agents working to shut the enterprise down¹⁵. Dove's hunches lead to a car at the bottom of a bog containing two bodies, one of them Malachy, the brother of Seamus Gallagher¹⁵. Seamus is eventually revealed to be Jackie McFadden, a notorious Northern Irish smuggler with a long-standing rivalry with another family, the McArdles¹⁵.

The series deliberately avoids flashbacks, taking the townspeople at their word even though some have motives to lie¹⁴. Scharf has said the fictionality of the mystery was deliberate: "It's a fake town, it's a fake place. It's all fake people. The mystery itself, we worked very hard to find something that is in no way adjacent to a real true crime story"⁷.

Production and filming

Principal photography began on June 27, 2022¹⁶. Although Bodkin itself is invented, the series was shot almost entirely on location in Ireland. The village of Union Hall in West Cork, a fishing community of fewer than 300 people on Glandore Harbour, doubled as the town, with additional West Cork locations at Glandore, Dromadoon Pier, and Poulgorm Bridge⁷. Production also used Belmont Demesne, Enniskerry's Carnegie Library, Sally Gap, and Travelahawk Beach in County Wicklow; Fenian Street, Howth Village, Howth Castle, and Leopardstown Racecourse in Dublin; and Dave's Diner in Julianstown, County Meath, for the American diner featured in the show⁷.

Scharf insisted the setting had to be West Cork, saying, "You drive around West Cork and around every corner you have to step out of the car and have a look as it's so beautiful"⁷. The writers' room was trans-Atlantic, with three American writers, Scharf as a Brit, and three Irish writers working together¹⁴.

Reception

Critical response was mixed. On Rotten Tomatoes the season holds a 67% Tomatometer from 39 reviews, with the critics' consensus reading that "Bodkin's satire of true crime investigation could use a more compelling mystery to hang its quips on, but the series' sheer eccentricity makes for an intriguing enough tale from the old sod"⁸. Metacritic assigned a Metascore of 59, categorized as mixed or average, based on 18 critic reviews, while its user score stood at 6.5⁹. IMDb users rated the series 6.9 out of 10 from about 24,000 ratings¹⁰.

Reviewers frequently compared the premise to Only Murders in the Building, another comedy about amateur podcasters solving a case¹³. Reception in Ireland was divided: The Irish Independent called the show "a winner"¹⁷, while The Irish Times criticized it as "toe-curling paddywhackery" that "thinks it is critiquing cliches about Ireland when in fact it is adding to the stockpile"¹⁸.

The series is listed as canceled/ended after its single season¹¹.

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Scripted television and comedy series › Drama and prestige series (individual series) › Crime and thriller series › Police and detective procedurals

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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